2012-2013 Season

Ninja Innovation

In order to stay in front of the pace of innovation, top companies must operate as an elite strike force--just like the legendary medieval warriors known as ninjas. In his new book Ninja Innovation, Gary Shapiro, President & CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, mines the valuable insights of these centuries-old warriors to spotlight the secrets of agility, creativity, decisiveness, and reinvention that are essential for twenty-first-century leaders seeking breakthrough success.

As head of the Consumer Electronics Association and its influential annual trade show, the International CES, Mr. Shapiro has worked with the most innovative companies in history--Ford, Intel, IBM, and Samsung, to name a few--focusing on creating policies and events that produce revolutionary products year after year. He has learned the key strategies that have guided these businesses to record-breaking profits, as well as the traps that have led so many others to crushing failure.

Copies of Ninja Innovation will be available for purchase at a book signing immediately after the meeting.

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Speaker Biography

Gary Shapiro Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®, the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer electronics companies, and owning and producing the world’s largest annual innovation tradeshow, the International CES®.

Shapiro led the industry in its successful transition to HDTV. He co-founded and chaired the HDTV Model Station and served as a leader of the Advanced Television Test Center (ATTC). He is a charter inductee to the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers, and received its highest award as the industry leader most influential in advancing HDTV. He focused on the need for and led the effort to obtain the 2009 cut-off date of analog broadcasting.

As chairman of the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC), Shapiro led the manufacturers’ battle to preserve the legality of recording technology, consumer fair use rights, and opposing legislation like PIPA and SOPA, harmful to a robust Internet.

Shapiro has held many exhibition industry leadership posts, and received the exhibition industry’s highest honor, the IAEE Pinnacle Award.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the Economic Club of Washington. He sits on the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. He has served as a member of the Commonwealth of Virginia's Commission on Information Technology and on the Board of Visitors of George Mason University. Shapiro also has been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a “mastermind” for his initiative in helping to create the Industry Cooperative for Ozone Layer Protection (ICOLP).

Shapiro leads a staff of 150 employees and thousands of industry volunteers and has testified before Congress on technology and business issues more than 20 times. In 2012, and in prior years, Washington Life magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in Washington. Under Shapiro’s leadership, CEA also annually wins many awards as a family friendly employer, one of the best places to work in Virginia and as a “green” tradeshow producer.

Shapiro authored CEA’s New York Times bestsellers “Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses” (Harper Collins, 2013) and “The Comeback: How Innovation will Restore the American Dream” (Beaufort, 2011). Through these books and television appearances, and as a weekly Forbes.com columnist and regular contributor to the Huffington Post, Daily Caller and other publications, Shapiro has helped direct policymakers and business leaders on the importance of innovation in the U.S. economy.

Prior to joining the association, Shapiro was an associate at the law firm of Squire Sanders. He also has worked on Capitol Hill, as an assistant to a member of Congress. He received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a double major in economics and psychology from Binghamton University. He is married to Dr. Susan Malinowski, a retina surgeon.